[This fragment is from a manuscript now in the Bodleian
Library at Oxford, and was first published in the Julian Editions, 7.147‑148,
in 1930. The fragment bears a close affinity in thought and style to a portion
of A Refutation of Deism, the Note in Queen Mab to the line "I
will beget a Son"both of 1813and to the fragment printed in
this text under the title of A Refutation of the Christian Religion. The work is without title in the manuscript. It was probably composed in
1813‑1815a period in which Shelley was endeavoring to establish
his religious ideas on solid ground. For his sources Shelley went to Hume's
Essays and to Spinoza's Tractatus, and especially to Paine's The
Age of Reason.]

. . . ultimately referable to the First Cause) . . . every
event which exceeds one's powers to produceas if whatever exceeded our
own powers was necessarily the effect of Omnipotence. Their argument stands
thus: nobody but God can do what I cannot do. But we have no right to suppose
a greater cause for an event than one precisely sufficient to produce that event.
Supposing also God to be benevolent as well as all powerful, it is not only
absurd but impious to impute to his special agency the production of the events
called miracles; because if his purpose had been to extirpate error by means
of the doctrines recommended by them and contained in the Christian scriptures
that purpose has failed and from the nature of things could not but have failed
as the Deity must have known beforehand as well as we now learn from history
and experience.

I am inclined to think the miracles related in the
Bible sprang from the three great sources: of imposture, fabrication, and a
heated imagination. But I am open to conviction; and if it can be proved that
they were produced by some extraordinary powers inherent in those who exhibited
them, I shall [be] willing to admit causes precisely adequate to whatever events
can be proved to be historically true. But could it even be proved to me that
the Sun actually moved from its place at the command of Joshua, I should no
more admit as a consequence that the Author of the Universe had especially enjoined
the extirpation of the Canaanites than if the motion of a drop
of dew [or] sunshine from a flower had been alleged us as a guarantee of a similar
communication. Still less would it persuade me of the truth of the impudent
contradictions and stupendously absurd assertions which the teachers of the
Christian religion pretend to deduce from the Old and New Testament.

This objection, which was foreseen by Jesus Christ
himself and is felt by the teachers of Christianity, has been met by the assertion
that the truth of the doctrines must prove the truth of the miracles. This is
both uncandid and absurd. What then do we want with the miracles, for if the
miracles require the sanction of the truth of the doctrinesthat is, these
doctrines are the immediate inspiration of God arising from their conformity
to what we reasonably concur. How can they communicate to the doctrines that
credibility which the miracles need to receive from these doctrines? How can
they confer that [quality] which it is necessary, before their genuineness as
miracles can be acknowledged, that they should receive from the doctrine whose
sole established claim to be divine rests upon that genuineness which thus they
can never acquire? Jesus Christ assures us that Christians will be in the greatest
danger of being duped by imposters, and recommends them not to be led astray
by miracles, but to try them by the doctrines of the performers. This method
would serve very well to determine whether those doctrines agreed with his own
or not, but could never conduct to any decision as to whether the doctrines
were divine or no, or the miracles the works of God. For if the miracle which
accompanies the doctrine be not in itself sufficient to authenticate the doctrine,
[how should the] doctrine of which every man must judge according to his own
reason possibly suffice to authenticate the miracle. And if even in the opinion
of a person who should think the doctrine conformable to reason (and many such
are to be found in the New Testament) the miracle should require this authentication,
the miracle would have been totally superfluous, without import as without
purpose, confirming and testifying in favor of nothing, deducting by the support
which it would itself demand from that credence which a doctrine agreeable to
reason might have otherwise obtained. Surely this pretense is solemn trifling.

A doctrine pretending to be divine, and therefore
true, may assert the most extravagant positions, and as there is no test of
it except a miracle, of which as it appears it is itself the test, it follows
that there can be no test at all. A doctrine pretending to be true may be brought
to the test of logic and dialectics which though not infallible often leaves
us in a possession of a probability sufficiently strong to assist us in confirming
our actions and sentiments to it. But this sort of doctrine only claims precisely
that degree of belief which the proof alleged in its establishment will authorize
and may from time to time be suspended.